Re: FWD: I-D ACTION:draft-klensin-unicode-escapes-00.txt

[Keith Moore <[e-mail]>]

based on a quick scan, it mostly looks fine to me, with a few caveats:

- it should be clear that this is for newly-designed protocols only.  it 
shouldn't be interpreted as a request to change existing protocols 
(including deployed and nonstandard protocols being standardized by 
IETF), as this would generally break backward compatibility by changing 
the meaning of '\'

- it should be clear that this is for occasional use of non-ASCII 
characters within a protocol field that is constrained to contain only 
ASCII characters (or a subset), rather than a recommendation for how to 
represent non-ASCII characters in a protocol field that is capable of 
carrying, say, UTF-8.

if the text already makes this clear, I apologize for not reading the 
document more carefully.

it might also be worthwhile to recommend this notation for use in 
describing character literals in RFCs, in such a way that it could be 
referenced by such RFCs.

Keith

> At the Apps Area meeting at the last IETF, there was a
> discussion of ways of referring to or escaping a Unicode
> character in an ASCII protocol or context.  I took an action to
> write a short I-D that explicitly recommended the use of form
> that reference Unicode code points directly rather than, e.g.,
> encoding the octets of UTF-8.
> 
> That document has been posted and, with the concurrence of the
> ADs, discussion has been directed to the [e-mail]
> list.
> 
> If you have any interest in internationalization issues, a
> careful reading of, and comments on, this proposal would be
> greatly appreciated.  
> 
> In the absence of comments, I will be pushing for Last Call
> fairly soon.